Links of Interest, and More to Love Meta (…in which I defend Kristian)
Over at Newsweek, there is a fantastic and thorough article on fat hatred, quoting Glenn Gaesser, Linda Bacon, and even Peter Stearns (whose book Fat History was a frequent reference for me as a grad student many years ago). I am virtually overcome with excitement, let me tell you.
It’s a fallacy to conflate the unhealthy action—overeating and not exercising—with the unhealthy appearance, says [Marlene Schwartz, director of the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity at Yale University]: some overweight people run marathons; eat only organic, vegetarian fare; and have clean bills of health. Even so, yelling at the overweight to put down the doughnut is far from productive. “People are less likely to seek out healthy behaviors when they’re criticized by friends, family, doctors, and others,” says Schwartz. “If people tell you that you’re disgusting or a slob enough times, you soon start to believe it.” In fact, fat outrage might actually make health-care costs higher. In a study published in the 2005 issue of the Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law,Abigail Saguy and Brian Riley found that many overweight people decide not to get help for medical conditions that are more treatable and more risky than obesity because they don’t want to deal with their doctor’s harassment about their weight. (For instance, a study from the University of North Carolina found that obese women are less likely to receive cervical exams than their thinner counterparts, in part because they worry about being embarrassed or belittled by the doctor because of their weight.)
If this article was a person, I’d probably try to give it a hug. Read the whole extravaganza here: America’s War on the Overweight: Anti-fat rhetoric is getting nastier than ever. Why our overweight nation hates overweight people.
There’s also an interesting post on the Women’s Issues blog on About.com today, taking More to Love and other Fat TV to task for everything they’re doing wrong.
I have a good friend I’ll call Kate who has always struck me as the most beautiful woman I know. She is overweight but incredibly fit and has no health issues. She’s warm and caring, funny and outgoing, a gifted ‘people person’ who demonstrates astounding creativity and boundless enthusiasm for whatever work she’s involved in. And she has a knack for organization and team-building.
A reality show fan, Kate has talked about auditioning for a couple of show over the years until finally she went to a Biggest Loser casting call. …As she described it, the production staff did their initial screening in groups. When she was called, she sat in a room with other overweight women and men. Each briefly told a little bit about themselves. Other questions followed.
She thought she was doing fairly well in the interview process until the participants were asked to describe how they felt about their size and weight. One by one, each person spoke of insecurity, inadequacy, self-hatred and low self-esteem. When it was Kate’s turn, she refused to go down that road. She said she was happy with her life and with herself, and that although she wanted to lose weight it it wouldn’t change how she felt about herself.
Kate didn’t make it on the show. She had the looks, the intelligence, the spirit, and the personality. What she didn’t have was the self-hatred — the only ‘fat person’ narrative that television seems willing to tell.
There’s not much new there, but it’s nice to see this sentiment being shared on a blog that isn’t fat-specific. You can read the whole post here: Why More to Love Promotes Fat Self-Hatred, and Why TV Needs a Real Fat Acceptance Show
It should come as a surprise to no one that I have done far more of my share of pondering on More to Love and what it’s saying to and about fat people, fat women in particular. While I have many thoughts to eventually assemble into a final assessment of the show, right now I am compelled to say something on the subject on the alleged craziness of recently-evicted cast member Kristian.
I’ve read in numerous forums where people call Kristian out as a crazy person, and/or a straight-up stalker, and it’s really been troubling me, since I’ve not seen anyone defending her. It should go without saying, but I have no personal or real-life connection to Kristian — I’ve never met her and I doubt I ever will unless I run into her in an AJ Wright in north Jersey someday — so rather I am limited to discussing her as a character on reality television, a character that may or may not be an accurate representation of the person she is in real life. Truly, we will never know. So I am only speaking to her portrayal on the TV show in question.
Playing devil’s advocate for the moment, I am concerned that Kristian comes across to some as crazy because she is depicted as honestly, truly believing that she has forged the euphemistic “connection” with Luke, and that he could love her back. In fact, Kristian is so emotionally invested it’s almost unthinkable to her that her relationship with Luke would not result in a fairytale ending. She likes him. She really, really, really likes him. This is actually true of everyone still living at Fatass Manor. Malissa, whom I have not seen disparaged as “crazy”, has also said she’s in love with Luke. Mandy, likewise, has said she’s falling for Luke, though she has yet to use the L word, so far as I know. Kristian, ostensibly being less experienced in having her heart shattered and hopes dashed, skips the euphemistic language and goes straight for the throat: she loves him.
Why is Kristian’s hopefulness something to disparage and mock? Do we really want to argue that Kristian is “crazy” for having feelings and expressing them frankly, and for innocently believing that they might be returned? Is Kristian crazy for not knowing better than to wear her heart on her sleeve? Is Kristian crazy for being excited about puppy love or new relationship euphoria or whatever you’d call that happy-wobbly giddiness one gets from meeting someone new, and for daring to express it to other women in the house as she might to her friends? If that makes her crazy, then 90% of all the women I’ve known in my whole damn life were, at times, totally off their kits.
I ask all of the above as a person who absolutely does not engage in this sort of heart-on-my-sleeve sentimentality myself; I am potentially one of the least outwardly-emotional people you will ever meet. By all rights, Kristian and her wildly extroverted !!!looove loooove LOOOOVE!!! exuberance should drive me up a wall. But she doesn’t, because her openness is honest and real. She’s not holding back. She’s not manipulating anyone. She’s sharing how she feels without making it a euphemism or a game.
I admit that it’s unusual to meet someone so forthright, so guileless, but is that really crazy?
The unspoken extension of the “crazy” talk, is, chillingly, the suggestion that Kristian is crazy for believing Luke could love her back with the same glee and openness she herself has embodied. If you just don’t like Kristian as a character, then fine, but let’s not call her crazy for being inexperienced and earnest and not knowing any better. If believing that she’s worthy of love and that a guy, even a dullard like Luke, could return those feelings makes Kristian crazy, then I say crazy on, girlfriend. I hope you’re that crazy forever.
Hey Leslie! Ty for the recaps…I,too, became a member of Team Kristian after the first show. Her Doesn’t Your Balloon Ever Land personality had me wanting to protect her from the inevitable heartbreak. I saw so much of myself in her, as I tend to say what I feel when it comes to affairs of the heart. If we be crazee for it, then so be it…you go Kristian! Wipe your eyes and shake the dust off your dancing shoes, the world awaits you!
I left another comment over on the More to Love ep 5 post, but wanted to talk about Kristian in more detail here.
I think Kristian’s apparent craziness (if one were to see it that way) is largely a function of 1.) reality TV editing and 2.) an innocent sort of unselfconsciousness honesty that is rare and beautiful, but unfortunately easy to mock. Poor thing is really out of her depth on a reality TV show. Is it wrong or crazy or pitiable for her to feel these things? Of course not. But a Fox reality TV dating show isn’t exactly a safe place to bare your soul. I was hoping this show would be primarily about fat women looking great and feeling beautiful, but the truth is it’s pretty exploitive. Just not in the way I thought it would be. Instead of being constant fat jokes & shots of girls eating and looking stupid, it’s showcasing their Fat Pain and exploiting it. Look at poor Kristian, Melissa, Danielle, and Heather. They spent all that time confessioning about their self-consciousness and rejection in previous romances. As soon as we’d heard it all, they were cut. The more confident ones (except maybe Mandy, don’t know about her) are still there. Maybe the show will take a turn for the more empowered. But I’m pretty sure it wasn’t part of Fox’s plan to take a fat wallflower and turn her into a fat diva.
I was enjoying that newsweek article until I got to the end, where it ended on a note of “fight the sin, not the sinner”…that kind of ruined it for me.
My opinion is this: while I agree there’s nothing crazy or wrong about feeling and expressing love for someone and wearing your heart so openly on your sleeve, it can sometimes lead to potentially bad decisions, major depression and other issues if the feelings are not returned by the object of affection, and the person in love does not handle unreciprocated feelings with emotional balance. I don’t know Kristian’s emotional state, so I don’t know and can’t say how she handled this situation. I hope she handled it with balance and was able to come out of her heartbreak over Lewk a stronger person.
My issue with Kristian was that she was *so* open about her feelings and so certain that Lewk felt the same way that she didn’t seem to look at the situation with any rationality - that Lewk was also considering other women, and that it seemed he wasn’t as open about his emotions with her as she was with him, at least until this last episode when he sent her home. Based on those facts, I thought Kristian was being a little immature by basing her actions completely on her feelings and not thinking about it more rationally. Again, absolutely nothing wrong with being immature; I was 22 once myself and probably more immature than Kristian. But if that immaturity leads to emotional instability in handling the loss of her hopes for Lewk’s love, without some rationality to balance it, that’s not a good thing for Kristian. Again, I have no knowledge of her emotional state so I have no idea how she handled it. I only hope she kept things in perspective and came out of it a stronger person.
*sigh* Not to be petty, but the Rudd center has been working on this issue for, like, awhile.
Could Marlene have spoken up, say, a decade or so ago, maybe?
Thanks for the pointer to the Newsweek article.
I haven’t watched More to Love at ALL, but reading your thoughts on Kristian has me wondering if she forgot this was a TV show - and thus on some level make-believe.
If you go to the Newsweek article, do watch the comments thread - the troll rage begins to slip subtly, but rather devastatingly, out of control - ironically, just like the article author says.
Ok, so I haven’t watched the show, but based on your recaps, I’d say your sympathy for Kristian is pretty on-target, as is thirtiesgirl’s assertion that her actions are due to immaturity. How old is she? 22? I was incredibly immature at 22! I would have been completely open and guileless at 22, because I desperately wanted to be loved. Now, at 30, with a little more confidence and experience, it’s easy to shake my head and sigh over that kind of behavior, but I get it because I’ve been there.
That being said, what I don’t understand about Kristian or any of the other girls on this show, or any other “reality” dating show (and I don’t mean to judge them when I say this), is that I would have NEVER been so naive that I would have honestly believed I could have a future with a guy who was actively dating, kissing, etc other girls while he was also dating me. And that’s not a fat thing, because the girls on skinny dating shows do it, too. I just don’t get it. Maybe I’m not “worldly” enough, but past date 3, if it wasn’t exclusive, it wasn’t going anywhere back in my single days. I don’t understand how they can all be so comfortable being cheated on, because that’s what that is when you’re actually at the “trying to make a connection” stage! That’s why I just can’t watch that show or others like it! I would never have competed for a man, because I never had such a low opinion of myself to think if a guy didn’t automatically recognize that I was awesome that he would be worth any time or effort on my part. Why? Because I wanted to be LOVED, and even in my guileless, immature, not-completely-confident early 20’s, I recognized that love was a 2-way street, and that a guy should be just as over the moon about me as I was about him.
So maybe that’s what seems a little off about these girls to those who call them crazy: the fact that they think true love includes cheating and insincerity. The fact that they don’t recognize it as such when it seems so obvious to those of us who are seeing every angle (including the ones that the people on the show don’t see) that the producers allow us to see. It seems so obvious out here. But then, looking back at past loves, I think a lot of us would say that it’s obvious now why it didn’t work then, but at the time, we really thought it was the real deal. Who knows? All I know is, thank goodness you’re watching so I don’t have to!
Sorry for the ramble!
Speaking of needing a show that doesn’t promote fat self-hatred, Drop Dead Diva on Sunday took on the “thin is healthy” meme and had a scene where Jane goes to the doctor, and when the doctor notices her blood pressure is high, she doesn’t tell Jane to lose weight but rather asks her if she’s been under any unusual stress lately…the show obviously has areas where it falls short, but someone over there seems to have a little experience with FA101.
I gotta say– reality show producers have a pretty poor record of engendering empathy for any WOC.
The doublethink of “Kristian is krazy because she thinks that she and Luke really have a love connection” from people who are watching a show the premise of which is that Luke is going to select his fiancee from among the contestants is pretty ironic.
The fiction of the show is that this setting can foster real love. Damning Kristian for believing that doesn’t follow, to me.
What Dreamy said is also part of the issue, I think. I didn’t go into the profiles in depth - AMOF, I try to stay as far away from the show as possible, but the Fatshionista updates “pull me back in!” - but from what I observed, I figured that Kristian was at least mixed race, and even if viewers looking for someone to vilify feel that all or most of the contestants are weak and needy, Kristian being an WOC just make her that much more of a(n) - if un/subconscious - target. (This seems to resonate that much more in light of the end of FatonFire’s intersectionality analysis at the end of her ‘Sartorialist’ article on the page here.)